I stole this from Gerald schroeder's website. I'm sure he won't mind. This is not a religious statement, though it certainly has implications. This is just me with my eyes wide and my jaw dropped. (Skip to the bold text if you get bored easy)

Dr. Dennis Scania, the distinguished head of Cambridge University Observatories: If you change a little bit the laws of nature, or you change a little bit the constants of nature -- like the charge on the electron -- then the way the universe develops is so changed, it is very likely that intelligent life would not have been able to develop.

Dr. David D. Deutsch, Institute of Mathematics, Oxford University:

If we nudge one of these constants just a few percent in one direction, stars burn out within a million years of their formation, and there is no time for evolution. If we nudge it a few percent in the other direction, then no elements heavier than helium form. No carbon, no life. Not even any chemistry. No complexity at all.

"The really amazing thing is not that life on Earth is balanced on a knife-edge, but that the entire universe is balanced on a knife-edge, and would be total chaos if any of the natural 'constants' were off even slightly. You see," Davies adds, "even if you dismiss man as a chance happening, the fact remains that the universe seems unreasonably suited to the existence of life -- almost contrived -- you might say a 'put-up job'."

According to the latest scientific thinking, the matter of the universe originated in a huge explosion of energy called "The Big Bang." At first, the universe was only hydrogen and helium, which congealed into stars. Subsequently, all the other elements were manufactured inside the stars. The four most abundant elements in the universe are: hydrogen, helium, oxygen and carbon.

When Sir Fred Hoyle was researching how carbon came to be, in the "blast-furnaces" of the stars, his calculations indicated that it is very difficult to explain how the stars generated the necessary quantity of carbon upon which life on earth depends. Hoyle found that there were numerous "fortunate" one-time occurrences which seemed to indicate that purposeful "adjustments" had been made in the laws of physics and chemistry in order to produce the necessary carbon.

Hoyle sums up his findings as follows:

A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintendent has monkeyed with the physics, as well as chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. I do not believe that any physicist who examined the evidence could fail to draw the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce within stars. Adds Dr. David D. Deutch: If anyone claims not to be surprised by the special features that the universe has, he is hiding his head in the sand. These special features ARE surprising and unlikely.

Universal Acceptance Of Fine Tuning
Besides the BBC video, the scientific establishment's most prestigious journals, and its most famous physicists and cosmologists, have all gone on record as recognizing the objective truth of the fine-tuning. The August '97 issue of "Science" (the most prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journal in the United States) featured an article entitled "Science and God: A Warming Trend?" Here is an excerpt:

The fact that the universe exhibits many features that foster organic life -- such as precisely those physical constants that result in planets and long-lived stars -- also has led some scientists to speculate that some divine influence may be present.

In his best-selling book, "A Brief History of Time", Stephen Hawking (perhaps the world's most famous cosmologist) refers to the phenomenon as "remarkable."

"The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers (i.e. the constants of physics) seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life". "For example," Hawking writes, "if the electric charge of the electron had been only slightly different, stars would have been unable to burn hydrogen and helium, or else they would not have exploded. It seems clear that there are relatively few ranges of values for the numbers (for the constants) that would allow for development of any form of intelligent life. Most sets of values would give rise to universes that, although they might be very beautiful, would contain no one able to wonder at that beauty."

Hawking then goes on to say that he can appreciate taking this as possible evidence of "a divine purpose in Creation and the choice of the laws of science (by God)" (ibid. p. 125).

Dr. Gerald Schroeder, author of "Genesis and the Big Bang" and "The Science of Life" was formerly with the M.I.T. physics department. He adds the following examples:

1) Professor Steven Weinberg, a Nobel laureate in high energy physics (a field of science that deals with the very early universe), writing in the journal "Scientific American", reflects on

how surprising it is that the laws of nature and the initial conditions of the universe should allow for the existence of beings who could observe it. Life as we know it would be impossible if any one of several physical quantities had slightly different values.

Although Weinberg is a self-described agnostic, he cannot but be astounded by the extent of the fine-tuning. He goes on to describe how a beryllium isotope having the minuscule half life of 0.0000000000000001 seconds must find and absorb a helium nucleus in that split of time before decaying. This occurs only because of a totally unexpected, exquisitely precise, energy match between the two nuclei. If this did not occur there would be none of the heavier elements. No carbon, no nitrogen, no life. Our universe would be composed of hydrogen and helium. But this is not the end of Professor Weinberg's wonder at our well-tuned universe. He continues:

One constant does seem to require an incredible fine-tuning -- The existence of life of any kind seems to require a cancellation between different contributions to the vacuum energy, accurate to about 120 decimal places.

This means that if the energies of the Big Bang were, in arbitrary units, not:

there would be no life of any sort in the entire universe because as Weinberg states:

the universe either would go through a complete cycle of expansion and contraction before life could arise, or would expand so rapidly that no galaxies or stars could form.

2) Michael Turner, the widely quoted astrophysicist at the University of Chicago and Fermilab, describes the fine-tuning of the universe with a simile:

The precision is as if one could throw a dart across the entire universe and hit a bulls eye one millimeter in diameter on the other side.

3) Roger Penrose, the Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, discovers that the likelihood of the universe having usable energy (low entropy) at the creation is even more astounding,

namely, an accuracy of one part out of ten to the power of ten to the power of 123. This is an extraordinary figure. One could not possibly even write the number down in full, in our ordinary denary (power of ten) notation: it would be one followed by ten to the power of 123 successive zeros! (That is a million billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion zeros.)

Penrose continues,

Even if we were to write a zero on each separate proton and on each separate neutron in the entire universe -- and we could throw in all the other particles as well for good measure -- we should fall far short of writing down the figure needed. The precision needed to set the universe on its course is to be in no way inferior to all that extraordinary precision that we have already become accustomed to in the superb dynamical equations (Newton's, Maxwell's, Einstein's) which govern the behavior of things from moment to moment.

Cosmologists debate whether the space-time continuum is finite or infinite, bounded or unbounded. In all scenarios, the fine-tuning remains the same.

It is appropriate to complete this section on "fine tuning" with the eloquent words of Professor John Wheeler:

To my mind, there must be at the bottom of it all, not an utterly simple equation, but an utterly simple IDEA. And to me that idea, when we finally discover it, will be so compelling, and so inevitable, so beautiful, we will all say to each other, "How could it have ever been otherwise?"

These images are prone to stop working. I hot linked them from Facebook. Don't hurt me.

This will probably not be entertaining for anyone who doesn't know Ryan personally. Ah, well. Today we changed Ginger Alert to Moose Watch, "in honor of Sarah Palin's Alaskan heritage." But then we changed it to EmuEmu are Alaskan, right? I meant Elk, not Emu. It's a freaking bird.

On Facebook, I found out today that I had accumulated a lot of new "Pieces of Flair". The application works like so: there is a large database of pre-made or user-created "buttons". The buttons are usually jokes or funny pictures. The kind of thing one would wear on their shirt if they wanted a good laugh. There are probably millions of them already, so there's a button for any sense of humor (even a few with nudity, I bet).

D:

Anyway

You can look through the buttons, add them to your profile, and send them to friends with the application. Or, you can just be lazy like me and let your friends send you good ones.

The unique thing about this particular application, that sets it apart from its competitors (like Bumper Sicker) is that it displays a virtual cork board on your profile, and you can arrange as many or little of your buttons on it, in any pattern you want. Most people just let them gather haphazardly, but I like to have order. I try to factor them and put them in rows and columns. Because I'm a freak like that.

Today I counted my total (after dropping the ones that were unappealing) to be 44. So I rearranged everything, and put them in 4 columns of 11, as evenly spaced as possible. I had to stagger the columns to maximize exposure of each button. It was hard. And time consuming.

I go eat.

Ian sends me another one. Number 45. 9 rows of 5. I refuse! I'll not rearrange them until I get to 50, so that I can have 10 by 5, and just be done with. OR, arrange them like that right now, with blank spaces for the future-comers. But that's so tacky. Hmm.

It doesn't matter, because nobody ever sees them anyway. Unless they go OUT OF THEIR WAY (Facebook has become tedious) to look at the buttons. Then they might appreciate my time and effort. My REPEATED time and effort.

On top of all that, my spoonful of peanut butter (Yes, I still do that.) tastes weird. Parts of it are bitter. I wonder if it has anything to do with what the spoon was used for last.

wiseguysupreme4: Hey, you.
Kookykido: Hi thar.
wiseguysupreme4: Can you test something for me?
Kookykido: Sure?
Kookykido: Like...
wiseguysupreme4: "Romanticocabrita: I have someone I can invite over for breakfast without them heading for my cereal collection.
wiseguysupreme4: :D
Romanticocabrita: (My eggs are better than my pancakes, though."
wiseguysupreme4: Reaction?
Kookykido: Huh?
Kookykido: My reaction/
Kookykido: ?*
wiseguysupreme4: Yes.
Kookykido: ...confusion.
Kookykido: Her eggs are better than her pancakes...
Kookykido: Yum.
Kookykido: I just had eggs and Swedish pancakes.
Kookykido: So now I'm hungry again.
Kookykido: I wonder what kind of delicious cereals she has in her kitchen.
Kookykido: But, confusion, for the most part.